• Media type: E-Article
  • Title: Detection of an Infectious Retrovirus, XMRV, in Blood Cells of Patients with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
  • Contributor: Lombardi, Vincent C.; Ruscetti, Francis W.; Das Gupta, Jaydip; Pfost, Max A.; Hagen, Kathryn S.; Peterson, Daniel L.; Ruscetti, Sandra K.; Bagni, Rachel K.; Petrow-Sadowski, Cari; Gold, Bert; Dean, Michael; Silverman, Robert H.; Mikovits, Judy A.
  • Published: American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2009
  • Published in: Science, 326 (2009) 5952, Seite 585-589
  • Language: English
  • DOI: 10.1126/science.1179052
  • ISSN: 0036-8075; 1095-9203
  • Origination:
  • Footnote:
  • Description: Viral Link to Chronic Fatigue Chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS) is a complex and debilitating disorder that is often linked to immune system dysfunction but whose cause(s) remain mysterious. Lombardi et al. (p. 585 , published online 8 October; see the Perspective by Coffin and Stoye ) now present a tantalizing new lead. In blood samples from 101 patients with well-documented CFS, over two-thirds (68) contained DNA from a recently described human gammaretrovirus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus–related virus (XMRV), which possesses sequence similarity to a murine leukemia virus. Cell culture assays confirmed that XMRV derived from CFS patient plasma and from T and B lymphocytes was infectious. Although the correlation with CFS is striking, whether the virus plays a causal role in the disorder remains to be determined. Interestingly, nearly 4% of the 218 healthy donors tested were positive for XMRV, which suggests that this virus—whose pathogenic potential is unknown—may be present in a significant proportion of the general population.